Richard’s Techdirt Comments

Re: Most likely US will be hypocrites

Agreed, the US has never accepted any international trade ruling against it in the past - except when the opponent was big enough to fight back - so no reason to suspect that this will make any difference at all.

Re: It is NOT too big to solve

I constant trend in the US and UK is institutional meanness.

If something good is to be handed out by the state (welfare benefits, healthcare, education or relief from wrongful imprisonment) then every possible financial stringency is invoked to avoid doing it on grounds of cost - but if something bad is to be done (arrest, trial, imprisonment etc) then NO EXPENSE WILL BE SPARED.

Re: Re: Re:

Of course one could try ignoring them until they actually complained - and then respond immediately - just enough delay to cause them an overhead but not enough to give them justification for a big lawsuit.

Re: Re: One thing gained

No. It doesnt work like this. Hotspot network is an additional, SEPARATE, VLANed one. Traffic goes thru different IP, doesnt count towards data caps (its us so Im assuming there are caps), and you need to login using unique identifier.

Yes - but as I said ASSUMING that the s/w is all working correctly that is ....

One thing gained

Charging customers for equipment that can't opt-out of a service that only enriches the seller, not the customer?

One thing the customer does gain is another option for plausible deniability when faced with a copyright infringement accusation based on an ip address.

Yes I know that it is supposed to be configured so that the address of the party accessing the hotspot wil show up rather than the hotspot host BUT that assumes that all the s/w is working correctly - and how likely is that?

Re:

feels like another instance where equal rights for all is turning into more rights for some less rights for others in the name of equality“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

Actually resorting to violence doesn't necessarily imply either that your position can't be defended otherwise or that you are incompetent. It merely implies that you couldn't be bothered to use another approach.

Re: The Past Speaketh

I do think on a monarchy policy level we need to look at what self-radicalization means because we are at war with this group of rebels. They do have an ideology of freedom.

All very fine when the radicals have an ideology of freedom. However the current lot of radicals don't. Their ideology is up there with the most repressive ideologies the world has ever seen.

The problem we are facing is this: Should you tolerate intolerance?

So long as the intolerance does not express itself in actions that impact on the freedom of others then yes you should (that is freedom of speech). However that does not mean that you have to be polite to those who promote intolerance. We have been too polite in the past and that has created the problem. To solve it we need to stop being polite - without resorting to force in the way that Gen Clark suggests.

Re: The US had relations with the Russian Tzar.

So yeah, the US government and the Russian government don't like each other very much.

I find it worrying that you don't seem to recognise the difference between the Soviet government and the Russian government.

For a while after 1991 the Russians tried to follow the US capitalist prescriptions and the result was disaster. The country was robbed clean by the oligarchs and went down hill rapidly and, worse still, was not much rewarded diplomatically by the west for its trouble.

Putin came in and put a stop to this process and has revived the country considerably (admittedly partly aided by oil revenue). I visited in 1994 and again in 2013 and the difference is quite remarkable.

Consequently he is well like by the Russians and it will take quite a lot to change that. People remember how bad the 1990s were.

Communism was a Western invention that never really fitted Russia. It is not surprising that it didn't work there. It was better suited to Germany (indeed East Germany was quite a successful state).

The current Russian government has little to do with communism. I did see/meet a few old communists on my last visit and they were a pathetic bunch, frankly in enial aboiut what has happened.

The big story in Russia of the last 20 years is the revival of the Orthodox church - which the west has largely ignored except when it sees a way to put a negative spin on it.

In St Petersburg 2 years ago I saw a small group of communist demonstrators (maybe 10 people). Just around the corner was a queue to get into the Kazan Cathedral where the Cross of St Andrew was visiting with the Patriarch of Moscow. The queue stretched around several blocks and totalled probably amile in length. I walked along it for half an hour without reaching the end.